Here's Where To Find All The Vending Machines In 'Fortnite: Battle Royale'

There's a new world object in Fortnite: Battle Royale, joining Ammo Boxes, Chests and Loot Llamas for little interactable objects that you can use as you play the game. Vending Machines work a little differently than the others, however: they allow players to trade in extra materials for weapons. They drop in different rarity tiers, and the cost goes up depending on what kind of machine you're working with: the higher the tier, the more the materials. And as we can glean from Epic's announcement, an Epic (the tier, not the developer) weapon will set you back a whopping 500 materials, which is enough to make a serious difference for a player that's nimble enough with building system to throw down 50 walls and staircases. But where are they? Is there a handy map?

Over on Twitter, Epic challenges players to find them all, and wouldn't you know: they've done so! Fortnite Intel has put together a map of all known locations, though it's evolving and we may have an update as more are found. There's no shortage to start with, however -- there are plenty on the current map, with a few more likely to arrive as people find them, as it looks like Epic wants this to be a widely available object. Here's where you should go to try out the new feature:

Vending Machine LocationsCredit: Epic Games/ Fortnite Intel

I like the way that Epic is building out game features instead of just adding more weapons: the arsenal is already fairly crowded, and even more so with the recent addition of high-powered Guided Missiles and Heavy Shotguns. And since Epic has only moved two weapons into the vault since the game started, that means things have really only expanded in the past few months. The Vending Machines are a handy solution to that problem: not only do that not further swell the weapon ranks, they give players that aren't racking up 5+ kills a match a chance to get their hands on a fancy piece of equipment that they could only have lucked into otherwise.

I plan to make heavy use of these things if I come across them: I can build in a pinch, but there's no way that I'm going to burn through 500 materials before getting killed -- I'm just not that fast. Higher level players might want to hang onto all the wood they can harvest for building elaborate forts, but I'd rather get my hands on an explosive to take them down.

I'm a freelance writer whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The New Republic, IGN.com, Wired and more. I cover social games, video games, technology and that whole gray area that happens when technology and consumers collide. Google...